The next front in the war of satellite/cable providers vs. consumers is going to be with the sports packages. With teams signing up for colossal deals with cable channels (like the Angels $3 billion 20 year deal-Thank you, Mr. Pujols! ), that extra money is going to have to come from somewhere. Ask New York Knicks fans in NYC how it feels to not be able to watch your team because both sides feel the need to wring every last drop out of the customer. They eventually came to an agreement but that problem is going to keep popping up all over the country in the near future.
Yeah Directtv just called and game me a whole year of NFL sunday blah blah for free. I don’t watch it but whatever. If they really want to kiss up over this they should give me showtime or HBO.
Whoa, really??? My wife bought me that for my birthday. Think I could get it refunded?
You could certainly attempt. I mean the thing about directv is that their representatives seem to have the power of a wizard and they can do pretty much anything for any price if you push hard enough.
that’s a bingo.
The only good thing that might come out of this is eventually the content providers are just going to bypass the ‘old school’ distribution networks…it’s only just started and is only going to grow bigger. Look at what Louis CK did with his live concert and ticket sales.
It’s just like what happened in the music industry. The artists will say ‘fuck you’ to the distributors and go direct to the consumers.
The only issue I could see with this new paradigm is the control of the internet as a delivery system is going to come under even more fire than it already has…if AT&T decides that it doesn’t want to allow Hulu to be viewed because it competes with their own TV service, they just block it.
ADirectTV has the single best customer service that I’ve ever had to deal with. They’ve handled every issue quickly and efficiently and given me free stuff to apologize for the inconvenience. I plan on calling up the customer service and requesting their customer retention area and seeing what i can get for losing these channels…should get a lot.
Except the infrastructure for that delivery is owned by the cable and telecom companies. BrightHouse and Comcast aren’t going to sit by and let HBO bypass them, and I doubt HBO is going to install cable or phone lines everywhere.
If only my apartment faced the right goddamn direction…
Yeah expect to see a piracy spike with teen mom, daily show, colbert report and futurama.
Comcast is already using a backdoor method of dissuading streaming with their data caps; the kicker is that they don’t count data streamed via XBOX Live when the console is used as a Comcast cable box but anything streamed via Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc. counts against the monthly data limit.
So, the customer is ALWAYS going to get fucked.
Don’t The Daily Show and Colbert usually post their episodes online the following day?
Probably but some people like to watch it on their tv, I know I do…don’t crap on my post, I work hard on them.
Ha! Not crapping on your hard work. Sometimes I forget that most people don’t have their computer hooked up to their TV.
ETA: Also that was the main thing I would be missing out on with this dispute. But they are nice enough to post the episodes online. I think the only thing I watch I will be missing is Tosh.0, which has been increasingly hard for me to watch, and I have barely started to watch Workaholics. So really this dispute wont bother me much. But you can bet your ass I will be calling them later to try to score some free NFL Sunday Ticket off them!
Only because I hadn’t seen it posted on any major news sites, here is the full list of channels gone from DirecTV right now:
Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, MTV, BET, VH1, CMT, Logo, Spike, TV Land, MTV2, VH1 Classic, Palladia, Nick Jr., NickToons, TeenNick, Nickelodeon West, Tr3s, Centric, MTV India, Nickelodeon HD, Comedy Central HD, MTV HD, BET HD, VH1 HD, CMT HD and Spike HD
It’s 17 channels (plus 9 HD versions) for a total of 26.
NOOOOOOOOO! Not MTV India!!!
fuck, I’d rather watch MTV India than the piece of crap US version…unless of course they have similar programming - “Thiruvananthapuram Shore” ??
Yeah, like I mentioned, I’m getting a Roku box and a $30 credit. Also, I just called in general to bitch about the receiver fees I get charged, and she found a way to get me a $15 credit per month for the next 12 months (almost the total cost of my receiver fees). So in a year, I’ll call back and bitch again. The thing I’ve found is, you really have to just call and complain and they’ll find a way to help.
now Viacom may block online viewing of their shows ?
Now that is really dickish.
what shows up when you try and view full episodes of Colbert
If I were an advertiser on a Viacom program, I would be getting more and more pissed by the hour.
Can you buy stock in Bit Torrent?